The Boys
by gorrthebisexualboy
Summary: High School AU! Devin's close knit group of friends eagerly assemble in his garage after hearing that Jacques got up to some mischief in France. Rated T for nonexplicit sexual themes.
1. Jacques Sleeps With Some Chick

Devin Narasaki

Now, I'm not the type to drink alone, but Geoff, Brody and Noah were running so late, I felt as if I had no other option. Please, don't mistake me for an alcoholic. I'm not. But the end of summer vacation called for a cold one with the boys.

So I lounged in my garage. My garage was one of my favorite hangout spots. It was far away from the rest of my house, so I could yell and curse as much as I wanted to. The Christmas lights hung up on the ceiling gave the garage a festive mood, especially now that the sun had gone down.

I heard the familiar sound of Geoff's Jeep creep up my caul de sac. He pulled up in my driveway and whooped "Hey, dude. How's it hanging?" asked Geoff, pulling me into a bro hug. I accepted the hug and reached into the cooler to grab him a beer.

Geoff was the epitome of gregarious party dude. He was by no means the king on campus, but he was very well-known and very well liked. He also had a tendency to not wear a shirt, which made him very popular with the ladies.

He always wore a straw hat on his head. I chuckled when I remembered the first time Principal Hinds tried to get Geoff to take his hat off. It was like a glitch in the Matrix or something. Everyone just started at Hinds incredulously until he backed down. Nobody messes with Geoff's hat.

Thankfully, Hinds is actually a pretty chill dude. Bend, Oregon is like one of those boring small towns where nothing ever happens. I wouldn't necessarily call it a sleepy town. But things dragged their feet every once in awhile.

"It's going good, dude." I said. In all honesty, it wasn't going well. It wasn't going bad either, really. It was just going.

I rubbed my forehead. How much had I drank already?

"Jacques has something he's pretty stoked about." Geoff informed me. "Apparently something happened in France."

Jacques was the sort of odd man out in our little merry band of misfits. Brody and Geoff were surfers through and through. I was a decent enough tennis player, but I still got slated for the JV team my junior year, so I guess that says something. Jacques was a ballerina. Or was it a ballerino because he's male? I mean, all the power to him. I took hip hop lessons in fourth grade, dancing is no joke.

He arrived in our little town of Bend, Oregon halfway through freshman year from Alberta, Canada. His Canadian accent had made very little effort to disappear throughout his eighteen months of American residency.

"Ah, speak of the devil and he shall appear, yes?" said Jacques, strutting in from across the street. I squinted and saw his rusty, old, lime green Pacer across the road.

Geoff heartily shook Jacques' hand. "Good to see you, dude."

"I missed you as well" Jacques responded, letting go off Geoff's hand and turning towards me.

Jacques pompadour haircut was gone, now replaced with the more modernized crew cut. I guess that Jacques could do whatever he wanted with his hair, but I didn't like sudden change.

"What did you do in France, dude?" asked Geoff, bouncing on the soles of his feet "I'm dying to know."

Jacques made a tsking sound and waggled his pointer finger "We must wait for the other four to arrive."

Geoff sighed and pulled out his phone "Oh, they're pulling up right now. Sweet."

Noah fading blue minivan pulled up right behind Jacques' God awful car, and the rest of the gang hopped out.

Brody was Geoff's blood brother. I can't think of a single major life event that those two have had that the other one wasn't present for. Except for Brody's first time with MacArthur. That would've been weird.

Y'know that one friend in the group that will do the stupidest shit in the world just because you ask him to. Yeah, that's the perfect definition of Brody. One time, at the end of sophomore year, Jacques dared Brody to memorize the dictionary. He's still working on that. He's all the way to 'styrofoam', according to Geoff.

Owen slid out of the rear driver's side and hit the ground hard. Owen was a habitual optimist and almost a little naive. After hearing stories about what he and Izzy get up to in the bedroom, I had to reevaluate. The big guy just doesn't really care what other people think. Something I respect. I wish I felt the same way. With my boys, I felt that way, but Owen feels that way regardless of who's in the room and who's listening.

Jay cautiously got out of the shotgun seat, his eyes quickly and wildly looking for danger. Jay was one of the oddballs of the group. During the first few days of school, Jay was being picked on by Eva. After latching on to us, in a freakishly bizarre turn of events, Eva antagonising Jay went from bullying slowly to mutual belligerent sexual tension. I didn't understand it. Geoff and Brody don't understand it. I don't think any sane, rational person understands it. Speaking of which, I should probably ask Izzy about it. Maybe she can figure it out.

Noah is the group's resident cynic/anchor to reality. He got a little grating at times, I'm not gonna lie. But he balances everyone out. I guess the best way to describe Noah's relationship to the group is sort of like Stanley from _The Office_. You might not like what he has to say, but he's gonna say and he's probably going to be right.

"Hey, Heineken!" exclaimed Brody "My favorite!"

I grabbed two beers out of my cooler and tossed them to Owen and Brody.

"Thanks, dude. I'll get you some Jack-In-The-Box later." promised Owen, cracking open a cold one.

I walked over to the cabinet on the far end of the room and opened it, revealing Jay's favorite beverage.

"And for the little guy, a lukewarm glass of water." I announced, setting it down on the counter.

What can I say? I like Jay but I have to admit, his consumption habits were a little weird.

I started for the back of the garage and started to grab some of those cheap, white, foldable plastic chairs and set them in a circle. It was a tradition whenever one of us invoked the Storytime Clause that we all sit in a circle and listen to whatever story one of us had. The last time the Storytime Clause was invoked was when Geoff realized he caught feelings for one of the girls at the surfing camp he was running.

Geoff took a swig of his beer and hiccuped. "Alright, spill the beans, dude."

"So, when I was in Canada, I had a one night stand. My first one-" Jacques started. He was interrupted when the garage erupted in thunderous applause. Owen clapped Jacques hard on the back "Good for you, dude!"

Jacques lowered his arms to tell us all to simmer down, but I could tell from the smile on his face that he secretly enjoyed the reaction he got. "So we were at a club. I met this girl. We danced our asses off."

"Whoop-dee-doo." snarked Noah.

"You know, if you finally grew some balls and made a move on Emma, maybe you wouldn't have such an adverse reaction." suggested Jay meekly. I couldn't contain my laughter and neither could anyone else.

"You're walking home." the pessimist deadpanned.

"No, he is riding home with me." corrected Jacques "Such an insult deserved to be rewarded."

I tried to calm everyone down before things got out of hand "All jokes aside, you need to ask Emma to homecoming this year."

"What, and get shot down in front of the entire school?" asked Noah harshly "I don't think so."

It was little glimpses into Noah's brain like this that seriously bummed me out. He nitpicked our lives for the sake of jokes, but he very clearly also nitpicked his own life and overthought everything. It was a sucky way to live. Being around the spontaneity of Brody and Geoff and alleviated some of this, but it still happened.

"Anyways," Jacques continued "We got back to the hotel room. Everyone was relaxing. Then she walked into the bedroom. But she gave like that look.." He faltered, trying to find the right words.

"Fuck-me eyes?" asked Geoff.

"Yes, that's what they are." confirmed Jacques. Adorably, Jay flinched at the sound of the f-word. Brody started rubbing his back to relax him. "So I followed her in the bedroom, and in my inexperience, I went down on her after six hours of dancing in a club."

"Alright!" whooped Owen "High-five!" Owen excitedly held his arm out for a high-five. Jacques hesitantly obliged.

Noah hummed to himself skeptically "That's gonna be a little hot and wet". I also had a pretty good idea of where this story was going. Shelly always liked making out with me after she won her tennis matches. Great kissing but she never put on deodorant after a game. It was a little rank. I could only imagine what poor Jacques and his poor French paramour went through.

"I have also never gone down on anyone before." added Jacques "This was my first experience."

Owen burst out laughing "Oh, no!"

"Wow!" I exclaimed

"And then I caught a whiff of the puss…It was so pungent. I was so sick. I almost threw up."

By this time, most of the guys, myself included could not stop chuckling. Even little Jay was entertained. The only exception was Noah, who was still licking his wounds from Jay calling him out.

"I tried to cheat, and started licking my thumb." Jacques pantomimed the action and wiped it on Brody's shoulder "And she was like 'If you do not want to do it, do not do it.' It was all downhill and I went back to my room after that."

"What?" asked Owen "Why?!"

"I gotta know this." said Geoff "What could possibly drive the great Jacques Borreau away from sex?"

"You do not know how bad her dirty talk was." Jacques shuddered "The worst I've ever heard."

"What did she say?" I asked. I couldn't wait to hear this one.

"If my boyfriend finds us, he is going to kill us." said Jacques, evidently still shocked she said that "Can you imagine my embarrassment?"

The group, Noah included, howled with laughter.

**A/N: This is just a dumb one shot I thought up of while hiking. I could easily make this into a multichapter thing. Let me know if you'd be interested.**


	2. The Pizza Store

To say Bend, Oregon was a small town would be inaccurate. Almost one hundred thousand people lived here. The largest settlement to stand in against the ever pressing tides of the wilderness in...well, I didn't exactly know how far. A distance.

Leaving Bend in any direction was miles and miles of farmland, and after that, dense forest.

After we all got hammered and Jacques told us his less than appetizing story about his escapades back in his home country, our senior year began.

Nothing too crazy happened.

My English teacher, a blonde, spraytanned sixty year old woman named Hitchens, seemed to be a complete airhead. How she got hired, I have no idea. Bend Heights High was the Castor to Bend High's Pollux. They get most of the funding and the attention of the city while Bend Heights was left to fight for the scraps. So we get teachers like Hitchens.

Hitchens was nothing, though, compared to Wilford. Wilford was the health teacher, and I could not possibly imagine a less qualified person for the job. Firstly, he was nearly three hundred and eighty pounds and got winded when he walked down the stairs. He's the type of teacher to teach about abstinence but nothing about contraceptives. Thank the Lord for the Internet. I didn't have him, but Shelby did. I would have to take his class next semester. Not something I was looking forward to.

Our story resumes Friday afternoon, at The Pizza Store. For most of my freshman year, I thought people just called the pizza shop down the hill from school The Pizza Store. It wasn't until like my sophomore year that I realized that The Pizza Store was the establishment's actual name.

The place was owned by an elderly Armenian man named Narek. And before you call me racist for assuming he was Armenian, that is one of the first things he told me. Right before that, he told me to follow The Pizza Store on Instagram.

I really liked Narek.

The Pizza Store was bustling, like it normally was before a football game. I could barely see Carrie wavign me down.

Carrie Milewski has been my best friend for thirteen years now, ever since I took a massive, burning piss on her sand castle.

To be clear, that's how we met. That's not how we became friends. We became friends after I apologized for it in third grade.

Also at the booth was Sam Parva, probably one of the most passionate gamers I knew. He wasn't at the shindig last week because he said he was still stuck on the King Dynal boss fight in Fossil Fighters, whatever that meant. Judging from the concentration on his face, Dynal was still giving him problems.

Jay was also there, carefully sipping on a cup of iced water.

Strangely, that's how I knew tonight was going to be irregular. Normally, Jay avoided iced water because it aggravated his teeth due to the soft enamel disorder he mentioned a while back. I couldn't recall the name.

Regardless, I knew Jay was in a spicy mood today. Granted, a spicy mood for Jay is bravely standing up to his shadow.

He was nestled in the arms of Eva Borelli, who as I mentioned last time, is the polar opposite of Jay. Together, they ran a repair shop near the north end of town. Technically, Mr. Borelli ran the shop, but anyone with eyes could tell that Eva did most of the work. Hell, even the fragile, 5'6 Jay did more work than her dad. The relationship between Eva and Mr. Borelli was...strained. That's me putting it lightly.

"Brody texted me a little while ago." Carrie reported "He wants to go to Fort McFadder after the game."

"You sure? Isn't that where Stacy disappeared a few years ago?" I asked

"God, I wish…" lamented Sam without looking up from his 2DS Lite.

I often like pretending that Stacey Cunningham was not a part of my life. She was very talkative, self-centered and condescending. Beyond that, she just smelled terrible. One time, when my family vacationed in California, the sand on the beach smelled terrible. According to a local, that heinous smell was the result of a lot of plankton and algae dying at once. Anyways, that sulfuric smell was what Stacey smelled like. I couldn't name a single nice thing about her. Which actually kinda made me feel bad.

Jay's nervous eyes flitted between Carrie's and mine nervously "Are you sure about this?"

"Don't worry, Small Fry. I'll keep you safe." said Eva, rubbing Jay's shoulders with a gentle smile.

Carrie looked at me and silently feigned gagging. I held back laughter.

Sam cursed under his breath "Coelophysis is too fragile, he can only take a hit or two in the SZ. Maybe if I try Neovenator…"

I reached across the table and snatched Sam's Nintendo. "Dude, you need to chill with the Fossil Fighters stuff. You missed Jacques telling us how he hooked up with a Canadian!"

Carrie and Eva rolled their eyes.

Sam groaned "Yeah, you're right. I don't like it but you're right."

"Remember freshman year when we went to that Sonic convention?" asked Jay.

Carrie covered her mouth and snorted, a bit of Dr. Pepper spewed out of her nose.

"It was rad." Sam reminisced. "It was way more rad than this."

"I don't I've done anything more rad." I agreed, hoping to get a reaction out of Carrie."

"Whole crowds of people singing the theme to Sonic Adventures 2…" Sam said dreamily.

Carrie and Eva looked at each other. "Can I leave?" Carrie asked.

We ignored them. "You guys remember when we were waiting in line…?"

"We didn't wait in line. They ushered us right in. They were like, Devin, Sam, Jay, right this way."

Eva tapped her wristwatch impatiently "Skip to the end boys, the game starts at ten."

"I had seven gourmet chili dogs and shit liquid for like ten days." Sam said, walking over to a trash can and depositing his cup.

Jay nudged Eva to let him out of her comforting grasp "I saw no less than three physical handicapped people almost clamor out of their wheelchairs to see the stage."

Eva raised her unibrow "Sonic is bigger than Jesus?"

I shrugged "I dunno, I don't like either. I just got shitfaced."

Sam clapped excitedly "Oh yeah, I forgot about that."

I felt a sharp pain in my stomach as Carrie's elbow entered it "Dude, you were fifteen."

Jay raised a finger "In his defense, we were twice as old as everyone else there."

After that, we walked out of The Pizza Store and meandered into the football game.

Bend High Football stadium was modest and almost comfy. There were five rows of bleachers that raised up to about twenty feet tall. The two bleachers closest to the entrance were populated by parents, alumni and younger siblings of current siblings. The third bleacher, the one in the middle, was populated by ASB kids and their associates. The students that everyone knew the name of but no one actually liked. Names like Courtney Estevez, Dakota Altbacker and Max Dodson. In the fourth row of bleachers resided the marching band, under the command of drum major Harold Pearce. Well, his title was drum major. Unfortunately, his letterman had a typo on it, identifying him as the drum mayor. Now, the band was largely referred to as Drumtown. Finally, the fifth row of bleachers, the one no one really bothered to go to because it was so far from the entrance, was where me and my kind resided.

Geoff, Brody, Jacques and Geoff's friend Bridgette were already sitting in the corner. The game flew by. No one but Eva really even paid attention in the first half. Of course, Owen wasn't with us because he was a defensive lineman, the unsung heroes of any given football team. Or so Eva says. Noah was also not at the game because he didn't care.

The collective mindset was on Fort McFadden. It was an old military installation a few miles east of town that was built during the Cold War. After the Berlin Wall came down, Fort MacFadden was abandoned, but never officially condemned.

The second half of the game began, and I started paying attention. Normally, we're losing by a healthy margin at this stage in the game, but we were actually winning 21-17.

Jay tugged on Eva's leg to ask what was going on, and Eva spouted a bunch of jargon that only Brody seemed to vaguely understand.

The second play of the second half, I briefly stopped paying attention to munch on my below average, two dollar chili dog, when the entirety of our bleachers went "OOOOO!"

I fumbled my chili dog, spilling over my jeans.

Owen was on the ground, howling in agony. We could hear his cries all the way up at the top of the bleachers. Without hesitation, we sprinted down the bleachers to see if he was okay. Spoiler alert: He wasn't.


	3. This Empty Western Hemisphere

Jay Buchanan I didn't stop panicking until 2 am that Friday. Well, at that point it was Saturday. Owen's injury reminded me all too much of Mikey's death. We were both born with no shortage of mental and physical disorders, but Mikey always had the worse end of it. I had to protect him from assholes like Scott Hickman and deal with my own problems.

Never planned on one day, Mikey would jaywalk just once. Just. ONCE. And he was plowed down by a speeding delivery truck. His fragile skeleton was obliterated. His soul had moved on a full ninety seconds before the ambulance arrived. From second grade to fifth, I shrunk away from any form of human interaction.

In hindsight, some of the people that reached out to me those years had good intentions. But I was too angry at the world. Mikey had such a difficult and short life, he was supposed to be allowed one mistake. He should've been allowed to jaywalk once. But The Universe said no. I

t wasn't until sixth grade that Carrie, Devin and Sam sat down next to me. There wasn't anything special that attracted me to them. In fact, I told them to just leave me alone the next day, just like everyone else. What made them different was that they didn't listen. The next day, they sat with me again. And again.

They never gave me the option to say no. They didn't let me push them away. After the third day, I didn't want to. Or, at least I wasn't scared of holding on anymore.

I rolled over in my bed to face the side of the bedroom that used to belong to Mikey. The posters he had put up of _Cars 2_ and _Star Trek: The Next Generation_ were untouched and dusty. His small, acoustic guitar was still on its stand. I might have touched it three times since his death. I tried to bring myself to sell it off at garage sales. I knew my IB Physics teachers, Mt. Snyder, would adore it. But each time, I wound up putting it back. Something inside me told me I would need the guitar someday.

Maybe Snyder's eccentricities were wearing off on me.

I went to pick up my phone and text Eva. She normally knows what to say in these situations. But she was probably busy with Owen in the ER. I couldn't bring myself to visit him. Everytime I look at a gurney, all I see is Mikey's small, mangled body.

I slowly rolled out of my bed and picked up the guitar. I gingerly strummed the strings with my fingers. Horribly out of tune, but there was a melody in there somewhere, almost daring me to find it.

My phone screen lit up. I briefly glanced over to see who had messaged me. It was Carrie, letting me know Owen was going to regain full mobility in his hips. I told her I was happy for him.

Then I started tuning Mikey's guitar, wondering if he was watching me do it.

xXx xXx

Later that morning, I clocked into work. I hadn't slept a wink, making it only the second time I've pulled an all-nighter. And the first time I've unintentionally done so. I spent the early morning hours teaching myself basic guitar chords. There's only so much Google could teach me, though.

Mr. Borelli regarded me coldly and went back to reading The Washington Post on his phone. I couldn't see his screen, but I could tell he was reading some sort of left-leaning publication just going off how angry he looked.

Mr. Borelli was built short and stout, just like his daughter. A thick, black handlebar mustache covered his upper lip. He had a tacky sort of combover that really wasn't fooling anyone. He wore a gross, ambiguously stained wife beater and a pair of grimy shorts that were white one day long ago, but had been yellow as long as Jay could remember. He looked like a dumpy Walter White.

"You're late." grunted Borelli.

I nodded and took my place behind the customer service desk. One thing I learned very quickly about Mr. Borelli is that any verbal response would just tick him off. Better to nod than mouth off. Or even apologize. You have to keep your head low.

The service desk used to be barren, but recently I had taken to sprucing it up. Got a few Matchbox cars. Started decorating the pens with gears and axles or whatever they were called. I wasn't sure if Mr. Borelli would approve but he either hasn't noticed or doesn't care.

Borelli mumbled something about big picture stuff and drove off, like he always does. Once I arrived at work, he bailed. I was pretty sure the only reason he bothered to show up to work was to make sure I bothered to show up to work.

Eva slid out from underneath Jacques's atrocious Pacer. "You ever miss the old days?"

I started inattentively rolling a Matchbox ambulance back and forth "I didn't realize we were old enough to have good old days already."

"Think about it, dude. How long ago were we just kids wearing out our jeans?" She was referring to the day she finally admitted to having a crush on me. Possibly one of the most surprising conversations of my life. We were playing tag on the playground in our old elementary school. Sometimes I felt like I was a kid and she was a phonograph. I sat there, just listening. It was one of the few times I had ever seen Eva truly flustered. That's not to say I wasn't, of course.

"Damn, five years ago…" I realized.

"You're gonna be eighteen soon." pointed out Eva.

"That I am." I had to come to terms with the fact that my childhood was coming to end. Maybe not this very day. Maybe not this week or even this month, but in a year I would be a graduate. Me and The Boys would go our separate ways. Let's face it, no one else in our ragtag band was in four IB classes. Most of them are going to the same, local community college. I was going somewhere else. What then? Who would I meet there? What would happen with me and Eva? She already had roots here, and it would take a miracle for Mr. Borelli to let her go anywhere.

I sighed and stopped rolling the ambulance. Playing with toy cars was something a kid would do.

Eva got up from her luge and switched the lever to raise it. His Pacer creaked and moaned ominously. "Man, the Borreau family is one the richest in town. You'd think Jacques would be able to afford something nicer than a '78 Pacer."

"Hey, don't talk about Munchausen that way!" I objected.

Eva furrowed her unibrow "He named his Pacer Munchausen?"

I chuckled and scratched the back of my head "We saw it on an insurance building or something."

Eva shrugged and started unscrewing the lugnuts attaching the tires to Munchausen. I knew I wouldn't be able to hold on to Eva forever. Not if I wanted to become a doctor. But I loved her.

Man, Mikey would know what to do.

Actually, he probably wouldn't. But it would be nice.

"Munchausen is quite the talker." commented Eva, ripping off her tire. The creaking and moaning reached a fever pitch.

I picked up a pen and started twirling it between my fingers. I was actually pretty good at it from doing Color Guard my freshman year. We...uh, we don't talk about that. "You ever wanna get out of this whiskey-mouth, vagabond town?" I asked.

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Do you ever want to leave Bend?" Eva laughed "Of course I do. But I can't just up and leave. Neither can you, we have responsibilities here." I looked at Eva, taking in everything.

Was she really worth sacrificing my college career? I didn't know.


End file.
